“Stephen. Why are you calling at this hour? It’s after three.”
“Little rich white boy, I bet. Don’ waste time, do you?” He was drunk, his tone ugly. She thought about hanging up, but that would have been running, and she never ran from things that scared her.
“There’s no one here, Stephen. You sound drunk. What do you want?”
“Wanna go to church tomorrow?”
“What?”
“Me, I’m goin’ to church. Big church. Easter Sunday an’ all.”
“Stephen, I’m hanging up.”
“Wait. My key. I want my key.”
“You called me at three in the morning to tell me that? Where are you?”
A moment of silence. Then: “I’m right on your goddamn front porch. Got your gun handy?”
Jesus, she thought. Had she locked the door when she came in? She couldn’t remember. She dropped the phone, found the door locked securely. There was no peephole, but she put her ear to the door and listened. Nothing. Back in the kitchen, she picked up the dangling phone.
“Hello? Stephen?”
The line was dead.
Got your gun handy? Was that some kind of threat? A warning? Or was he just infuriated and trying to scare her? Hard to tell. But suddenly she realized what the numbers were. Redhorse’s call had done it. Now when she looked, the digits divided neatly into a telephone number: 52 997 544 1682. She knew the first two well: 52 was Mexico’s international country code.
She punched buttons on the wall phone and waited through three rings. Scratchy international connection, rough male voice. “Sí?”
“This is Hallie Leland calling. I’m a friend of Kurt Ely’s. Can I speak to him, please?”
She heard a hand cover the phone, Spanish shouts. Seconds passed, and then the connection broke. She dialed the number twice more but got only busy signals.
Ten minutes later, she was getting ready for bed when the phone rang.
“Hello?”
No one spoke, but she heard someone breathing on the other end. “Stephen, is this you? Talk to me.”
Several seconds later, the caller hung up. She dialed *69. A recording said, “We’re sorry. That number is private.”
Day One: Saturday
13
Hallie slept badly and woke at ten the next morning with her mind churning. Redhorse. Ely. Luciano. FBI. Lie detectors. She pulled on a white polypro top, blue shorts, New Balance 990s. She usually carried her cell phone, but couldn’t find it and wanted to run more than she wanted to look for it. After stretching, she jogged the half mile uphill to Norbeck Road and the level mile to Georgia Avenue. She had worked out an eight-mile triangle that started with four straight, flat miles north on Georgia, then two western miles of interval hills on winding back roads, and finally a long, easy return leg on Norwood Road. She usually finished in about an hour.
She cruised at eight minutes a mile, ignoring stares and honks, but still glad to leave busy Georgia Avenue behind for the hilly back roads. Ivy Lane rose and fell for a mile. She swung right onto Remarque Road, a narrow, unpaved lane that climbed very steeply for a half mile. It ended in a circle, which led back to the road.
She was coming around the circle’s far side when she saw two men. Both wore yellow bandannas over shaved skulls, black-and-yellow wristbands, and black tank tops with “LK” in gold on the chests. Heavy gold chains hung around their necks, and they had so many tattoos that their skin looked more blue than brown.
“Hey, how you doing?” one called. “Nice day for a jog.”
She thought, ’Bangers. Time to go.
Their chests and arms were huge, and they were blocking the road, but she could run through woods that abutted the circle and then back to Georgia Avenue. She turned to sprint away.
“Halleeee, don’t run off. You call a friend of ours. He just want us talk with you a little.”
They know my name?
Before she reached the woods, a black Navigator with D.C. tags and mirror-tinted windows blocked the circle. Two more Latin Kings got out. Both pairs came toward her, pimp-rolling and smirking, touching themselves. One lifted his shirt, showing a pistol butt. He said, “Hey, coño.”
She was trapped. The houses were close together on both sides of the road. If she bolted toward them, the men could cut her off easily. They were close enough now for her to see their teardrop tattoos. One man had three, the other four. A tear for each kill, she had read somewhere, like notches on a gun. Right eye for whites, left for blacks.
They were fifteen feet from Hallie when the door of one of the houses opened. An older woman with white hair and a white apron over her blue dress stepped out onto her front porch and touched a newspaper with her foot. She started to pick it up, and Hallie felt as if she were watching a scene in slow motion. The Kings ignored her. Hallie thought, If I scream for help, she will panic and lock that door.
A King was reaching for her when she spun and trotted toward the house. Fast enough to avoid the man’s grab, slow enough not to panic the woman. The men watched without moving. Hallie thought they expected the old woman to see them and slam the door. Hallie expected so, too.
The woman stood, paper in hand, and looked toward the sound of Hallie’s approach. With pleasant smile and steady voice, Hallie said, “Hi! Sorry to bother, but I really need a bathroom.” She trotted right up the steps, pulled the woman by her wrist into the house, slammed the door, and locked it.
“Who are you? What do you think you’re doing in my house?” Both of the woman’s eyes were filmy and gray with cataracts. She hadn’t seen the Latin Kings.
“Men out there were going to attack me,” she said.
“What men? I didn’t see any.”
“Out in the street. Four. I need to use your phone.”
The woman pointed toward her kitchen. When Hallie returned, the street was empty.
***
“Be sure to call us if you see them again.” The Montgomery County officer was turning his white cruiser into her driveway.
“Don’t worry. And I appreciate the ride back.”
“No problem.”
A dark blue Buick sat in front of her house. The cruiser stopped, and she stepped out. A man in a gray business suit emerged from the Buick, came over, and showed the officer an ID. Another man got out. He wore a blue blazer and chinos. That one she recognized.
“Agent Luciano!” Hallie said. “I can’t believe you’re here already. I am so glad to see you.” She almost hugged him. “You won’t believe what just happened. Montgomery County police called you, right?”
Luciano looked at her. “What?”
“I was out running, and four men came after me. They were gang members and—”
Luciano held up his hand. “We don’t know anything about that. This is why we’re here.” He withdrew an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.
“What is this?” she asked.
“It’s a warrant to search the premises of your house and its immediate environs.”
“What? I thought you were here because … Why would you want to search my house?”
“You failed the polygraph, Dr. Leland.”
She was stunned. “That’s not possible. What part?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that. Please read the warrant. We could have forced entry, but I thought we’d give you a few minutes. Your car was here.”
“I didn’t lie about anything. You have to believe that, Agent Luciano.”
“It doesn’t matter what I believe.”
“I would have let you in.”
“I believe you. But—” He held up his hand. “Look, please stay outside while we execute the warrant. And it would be easier if you unlocked the door.”
“Or you’ll break it down?”
He waited. She took the key from its pocket inside the waistband of her running shorts.
“One thing you should know. I keep a handgun under my bedside table. I have a permit for it. How long wil
l this take?”
“As long as it takes, Dr. Leland.”
Day Zero: Easter Sunday
14
Hallie awoke fuzz-brained and thirsty. She looked at the bedside clock: 6:13 A.M. What day? Sunday.
In the kitchen, she fumbled a glass from one of the cabinets, reached for the faucet, and suddenly somebody was hugging her from behind. Only one person had a key.
“Stephen!” she yelled, struggling to free her arms. “Let me go. This isn’t funny!”
A hand pushed the back of her head forward into the V created by a forearm and bicep. The hand pressed harder and the V tightened, compressing her carotid artery and jugular vein. Her vision grayed, and her skin tingled, and she heard buzzing like a thousand bees swarming in her head.
15
The Secret Service started screening people at six A.M. for an eight o’clock service. It was not a quick process. Every attendee passed through five layers of security. Metal detectors were first. Then stand-in-place threat-detection systems, augmented by dogs sniffing for explosives and biological agents. Concealed face-recognition scanners analyzed every visage. Specially trained agents watched for “tells”—physical manifestations of unusual levels of stress, anxiety, anger, or fear.
Backer had seen it all before and took little notice.
As head verger, he worked hard to prepare for the service. He and the other vergers had already laid programs on every seat. They had made final adjustments to the lavish floral arrangements flanking Bishop Newberry’s Canterbury Pulpit and the Holy Eucharist table. Checked the sound system. Straightened the altar candles. Set out chalices, wine vessels, plates of wafers.
Everything was in order by six forty-five. He dismissed the undervergers. It was time to make himself ready, as well.
16
Hallie struggled toward the light. Pain. Good: pain meant she was alive. Something was around her neck. Too tight. Rough, cutting her skin, pulling against her throat. She was sitting down, but couldn’t move her arms and legs.
It was dark, and she was bound to a heavy, solid chair. Towels covered her forearms and lower legs like soft casts, and duct-tape overwraps bound them to the chair’s arms and legs.
She remembered someone behind, squeezing her neck. A queer buzzing, then passing out. Waking up here in her own basement with what felt like a noose around her neck.
Once she had been trapped in a cave passage that held her like a stone straitjacket. Her arms were extended straight out in front, her legs behind, and she had been inching forward by pushing with her toes, pulling with her fingertips, and keeping her lungs deflated. But then the passage ceiling dropped another half inch, sharp projections stuck down behind her shoulder blades and up under her chin, and she was jammed. The panicked urge to flail and writhe was almost irresistible, but the only way out was to relax, soften, make herself smaller. No one could help—hauling her back with a rope would have shredded her flesh. Only she could save herself. It took two hours and utter control of mind and body, but she did it.
This new entrapment, she understood, would take the same kind of control. And she was not sure even that would be enough.
17
On this day of days, all had to be right for the eyes of the Lord. Henry Backer fastened the top button of his new black cassock. His shoes, socks, and shirt were also new. His room contained no mirrors; he thought they bred vanity. He didn’t need them to brush gray strands straight back from his forehead and shave his cheeks glass-smooth.
The Bible stood upright on his table. As Kurt Ely had instructed, he put on a surgical mask and latex gloves. Then he poured the contents of the aluminum cylinders into a glass bowl. Backer had been curious to see what the pathogen would look like, but it was just clear, viscous liquid with no odor. He used a new one-inch Purdy brush to paint the liquid on the front and back covers of the Bible, making sure—as Ely had instructed—to use every drop. It dried to invisibility as he watched. The Bible looked new, clean, and shiny.
He put everything but the Bible into a plastic bag and dropped it into his wastebasket. Later it would go to the Anacostia Refuse Station’s incinerator.
He rolled the cuffs of the latex gloves down and put his white clerical gloves on over them.
It was time.
18
For Justine Laning, the novelty of traveling in a vehicle with five-inch armor, smoke grenade launchers, a supply of B-negative blood, and a Remington shotgun under the front seat had worn off after the first few weeks. Daughters Amica and Leanna put on their best blasé faces during trips around Washington, but Laning knew that traveling in the Beast was still like an amusement park ride for them. The First Husband usually dozed off within ten minutes; car rides did that to Paul. Right now, he was nodding, the girls were laughing and pointing out the windows, and Laning was enjoying a rare moment of doing exactly nothing.
She watched the city stream past as the Beast and its flock of red-blinking, siren-wailing security escorts sped north on Wisconsin Avenue. Washington in April was as beautiful as any city on earth, not only to see but to smell, with apple and cherry blossoms, hibiscus and gardenia, roses—a kaleidoscope of fragrances. They were mostly a memory now, because she was always shielded from anything the Secret Service thought could harm her, which meant just about everything. Not even light reached her untouched. The Beast’s windows were so thick, filtering out so much natural light, that interior fluorescents were needed.
19
“Those ties aren’t too tight, are they? We can’t have them leaving any marks. That’s why I used the towels.”
There was a strange rustling. She recognized the voice and the cigarette reek. “Kurt?”
“Hi, Hallie.”
“I thought you were dead.”
“You didn’t really, not anymore. You talked to that bitch Taylor. Broke into my house. Called my Mexican friends. That was your big mistake, let me tell you.”
“What’s going on?”
“I could just kill you and be done. But you are the most conceited bitch I have ever met. I’m going to enjoy demonstrating just how smart you’re not. You thought the expedition was about finding something in the cave.”
“Wasn’t it?”
She saw a flame and then the red coal of a cigarette tip. “We needed to bring something out. Have you ever heard of Biopreparat?”
“The old Soviet biowarfare lab. A horrible place. Shut down years ago.”
“The law of unintended consequences is a beautiful thing.”
“What?”
“Overnight, they put thirty thousand scientists on the street. Can you even imagine what a million bucks looks like to a hungry Russian?”
“You’re talking about bioweapons?”
“What do you get if you cross Mycobacterium leprae and Streptococcus?”
“Leprosy and strep? Nothing. Vastly different genomics.”
“Come on. Thirty thousand scientists with unlimited budgets? They could have cloned Jesus Christ if Moscow had ordered it.”
“Why would they want to cross those two bacteria?”
“Who knows why Russians do anything? Paranoia and vodka are a dangerous mix.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Believe it. The stuff—we call it ‘the Skinner,’ by the way—ate the skin right off some poor Mexican. I saw him.”
“That would be fatal.”
“Fatal, but not quick.”
“But why would you have anything to do with that? You’re not a terrorist.”
In a very different voice, Ely said, “I am a New Patriot.”
“What’s that?”
“Today, no one knows. Tomorrow, the world will.”
20
The Beast stopped. Onlookers crowded against the police barriers that formed a one-hundred-foot perimeter around the president. Laning sat patiently. It always took ten minutes for the traveling security detail to deploy. Agents were responsible for thirty-degree sectors of an imaginary circle, the center
of which was the Beast. Only after all twelve agents reported that it was clear did the detail commander instruct the agent in the driver’s seat to unlock and unload.
Two agents opened doors while others formed living walls around the president and her family. When everyone was in position, the whole assemblage moved quickly toward the cathedral’s twelve-foot-high doors.
“Hold up a minute,” Laning said. The detail’s lead agent, a balding, broad-shouldered man named Bob Delaney, started to protest. Laning was already halfway to a white-haired woman in a wheelchair who held a sign that read, “I’m 90 and I vote. God Bless America.” Laning grasped one of the woman’s hands in both of her own.
“What’s your name, ma’am?” she asked.
“Edna Hayes, ma’am.”
Laning smiled, her eyes shining. “God bless you, Edna.” She clasped the woman’s hand a moment longer, then straightened and looked at the other people.
It was hard to keep her face composed. Before taking office, she had known one sure thing: it would be like nothing she had imagined, or could imagine, any more than she could have imagined childbirth. She had been right. Washington was a cauldron, and every day scalded her soul. There were mornings—and she would keep these secret to her dying day—when her first waking thought was Dear God, take me away from this.
But then on days like this she would come out and see the people, her people, their faces alight with joy, and there was magic in them and in her attacked and slandered country, and in such moments she saw other faces, frozen at Valley Forge, bloody at Little Round Top, raging at Belleau Wood and Omaha Beach, stoic at Little Rock, jubilant on the moon, faces of people like these right in front of her, and from them all she took the strength to continue.
Lethal Expedition (Short Story) Page 5